As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Loose Change Has Loose Screws

Here are a couple of short debunking videos done by a young man. Good stuff, I especially like his sense of humor!

More Bitterness from the No-Planers

I've always felt that the 9-11 Deniers trying to distance themselves from the no-plane crowd is like the guy at the loony bin dressed up as Napoleon telling you that the man who looks like George Washington is actually a nut.

Greg Palast on the Kooks

They get into 9-11 Denial starting about 12 minutes into the interview, and Palast, who is far from one of my favorite people, comes up with some genuine bon mots as he dismisses controlled demolition and Steven Jones.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The NY Times on Rosie and WTC 7

The Times, which received 5 Pulitzers for its 9/11 coverage, even if Jim Fetzer insists Loose Change did a better job of investigating, ran an article today on the recent Rosie O'Donnell controversy. The article is hidden behind that idiotic Times Select thing, but I posted the interesting part:

She also recently took up -- without quite spelling out -- a theory that one of the buildings at the World Trade Center, No. 7, was brought down by bombs late in the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. No. 7 was not one of the towers struck by the airplanes, she said, but a separate building ''that got hit by nothing -- 47 floors and dropped, 5:30, into itself.''

She also said: ''I do believe that it's the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics that World Trade Center Tower 7 -- Building 7, which collapsed in on itself -- it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved.''

That conversation has been left dangling by her abrupt departure from the show, but her statements made their way to Queens and the home of Daniel Nigro, retired after a life in the Fire Department. He began the morning of Sept. 11 as second-in-command; by 10:30, he was in charge, when the chief of department, Peter J. Ganci Jr., was killed.

''I feel like I watch the show because it's replayed so often on the news: 'I never saw fire melt steel,' and the studio audience clapping, like this was some great revelation,'' Mr. Nigro said. ''It's true that there has never been a skyscraper collapse as a result of just a fire. It's a natural progression to a conspiracy theory.''

THE world has paid little attention to 7 World Trade Center, which fell seven hours after the north and south towers. It was 47 stories tall, but less than half their height. No one was inside. Since 2,750 people had been mortally injured or died in the attack, hardly anyone cared about the collapse of an empty skyscraper, no matter how novel. Early reports billed it as the first steel skyscraper in the country to collapse solely from uncontrolled fire.

As time went on, the collapse of No. 7 became a focal point for people who suspected that the federal government had a malevolent hand in the Sept. 11 attack, particularly since the building's tenants included the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense and the Secret Service, along with the city's Office of Emergency Management.

By Ms. O'Donnell's account, only explosives could have brought it down. About 90 minutes before it fell, however, Mr. Nigro said he and other chiefs decided to get out. ''We believed from observations inside and out that there was structural damage,'' he said. The building had been hit by debris from the collapse of the north tower, 300 feet away. Fires roared.

His account is backed up in two ways. First, in oral histories, firefighters and commanders described retreating from No. 7 because of the expected collapse. Second, photographs taken from a police helicopter show that a large chunk of the bottom of the building had been destroyed by debris from the north tower; a comprehensive study by Popular Mechanics magazine concluded that along the bottom 10 floors, a quarter of the south face was knocked away.

What We Have Here Is a Failure to Indict!

LOL! Remember that Citizen's Grand Jury in San Diego that supposedly indicted something like 15 people in connection with 9-11, including Cheney, Rumsfeld and others? Well, turns out it didn't happen.

Even with an all-Truther Grand Jury, with Richard Gage, Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan providing "expert" testimony, they couldn't get an indictment:

Although a number of procedural problems prevented the people who volunteered to act as jurors at the April 14 event from ever working together to come to conclusions and issue indictments, they say a grand jury may some day be able to do so.

More than half the original volunteers dissociated themselves from the event on or shortly after April 14. Even so, at least eleven out of eleven of them have expressed in writing their very strong desire to publicly correct false reports that a citizens’ grand jury in San Diego indicted or charged people with 9/11 crimes.

Cindy Sheehan Has Some Free Time...

And we know that people who have free time tend to join the 9-11 Truther Bandwagon. She appeared on Alex Jones' show today (MP3 File) and lent her support to the crackpots. Her appearance starts at about 68:00 into the show.

She gets into the 9-11 Woo starting around 76:00:

I think that the 9-11 Commission Report was a total travesty and um, a smokescreen and I am also calling for an independent um, like I said a better investigation, um actually an investigation into 9-11 because really the other one was just a farce, and I have steadfastly stuck to my guns and I believe that part of the reason why we're having so many problems in the Arab Muslim world is because of our overwhelming support for Israel's policies in Palestine. And I've supported it, I've said I'll stand by that statement 100%, I think our policies need to be fair in that region to everyone, not just the government of Israel and I know there are many people who are Jewish and who do live in Israel who agree that their government is very oppressive of the Palestinian people, and I think that those are occupied territories as much as Iraq is and I've called for occupations to end all over the world."

Jones of course wants to nail her down on the tinfoil stuff and she obliges at 78:28:

"Well, why, um, was the air defenses doing a uh, exercise that day. Why was the new FAA head there that day for the first day, and why weren't the controls--the automatic mandatory controls--when you lose contact with an airplane, you intercept it with a military jet, and that should only take seconds, and those orders--I mean it's not even--from what I understand, and you know more about this than I do, it's not even an order to do that--it's mandatory! (Jones interjects, "It's default!") From what I understand it's the FAA person, who just started that day, countermanded that automatic order."

She is of course referring to Ben Sliney, who was not the head of the FAA, but the national operations manager, but who was in fact in his first day on that job on 9-11. And the notion that those planes could have been intercepted in seconds is risible. In the much-cited case of Payne Stewart, for example, it took the military 4,860 seconds to intercept his plane; approximately 81 minutes in other words. Sliney's major order that day was for a national groundstop, prohibiting any more planes from taking off; he certainly made no orders that could remotely be interpreted as forbidding the military from intercepting the hijacked planes.

"And it does look to me like a controlled demolition. But I'm not an expert.... But maybe now that I have more time, I'll study it more thoroughly...."

Source of Glow Revealed

James has covered this photo in several prior posts:

I borrowed the DVD WTC the First 24 Hours from the library today. It's an eerie film; no narration, no background music, just a cameraman wandering around Ground Zero after the towers collapsed. There are a couple good shots of WTC 7 with the smoke just pouring from every floor in the building. But at about 16:10 into the film (extended version) they show a very similar scene to that photograph, and we can see what is causing that glow. It is not, as Steven Jones has speculated, molten metal. In fact, it is not even the steelworkers cutting the steel. It's a high-powered portable light. At about 16:40 one of the workers actually picks it up and moves it.

Update: The problem photo was another one as pointed out by Gravy at JREF, and apparently Steven Jones has removed that from his peer-reviewed papers.

Luke & Tom Boldly Confront Old Man

Those Wacky Architects & Engineers for Truth

George Washington, aka Alex Floum, was proud to discover that the Truth Movement had another structural engineer on board yesterday. How much more thrilled must he be to learn today that a flood of structural engineers are now joining Architects & Engineers for Truth:

Hey, wait a minute, I didn't know Ron Jeremy was a structural engineer! Of course, he is famed for his erections. ;)

Update: Well, that was fun while it lasted. I note they still show the mysterious Michael Voschine, PhD as one of the members.

Kevin Barrett: Olympic Gold Medalist

Kevin Barrett, having failed at his career as a part-time college professor and then a bounty hunter, has now taken up a new profession. From a post on 911 blogger from a letter by the director of the Vancouver 9/11 Truth Society.

Dear Friends,

University of Wisconsin-Madison associate, Teacher of Islam, Olympic Gold Medalist, and MC for the Vancouver 9/11 Truth Conference Kevin Barrett is currently in Morocco in search for Hijacker Waleed al Shehri.

Not only has he confirmed his whereabouts, but has met with some of his colleagues and friends that have all reported and confirmed that yes, Waleed is infact alive and well in Morocco. Mr. Barret has yet to report meeting with Waleed himself and getting his picture, but he is committed to doing so before his return. If he is successful, these pictures will be seen for the first time at our conference in June.

Olympic medalist? Kevin Barrett's father actually does have a gold medal in sailing, but Kevin himself certainly doesn't, unless they give one for being a clueless idiot. The irony of this is they post this letter a day after Barrett himself gets back and says that he couldn't find any indication that the guy ever existed.

Yet Moron the Empirical Method

Another 9-11 Conspiracy Theory

They Let the Bounty Hunter Back in the Country

Kevin Barrett is back from his bounty hunter stint in Morocco and talking about it on one of his nutjob radio shows.. To no surprise, he did not find 9/11 hijacker Waleed Mohammed Al-Shehri, who died 5 1/2 years ago when his hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Neither did he find Saudi pilot Waleed Ahmed Al-Shehri. He says his investigation revealed that Al-Shehri never worked for the Moroccon airline, but may have worked for the Saudi airline, and he got a local journalist to continue to investigate the situation.

Barrett also mentioned that he doesn't think the BBC, which started this whole story, actually investigated it directly. Duh, read the freaking BBC article (emphasis added).

He told journalists there that he had nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington, and had been in Morocco when they happened. He has contacted both the Saudi and American authorities, according to Saudi press reports.

He is still talking, but I don't think I will listen to the whole two hours. Barrett did add that he thought that all of the families of the hijackers had said that they don't believe that their sons were involved. Funny how he brought that up, because his family had this to say:

The Al-Shehri brothers, who studied at Abha Teacher Training College, seem to have come under similar influence.

"They were ordinary guys, then they changed," said one of their cousins. "It's not unusual here for a man to change overnight from being carefree to being religious. It was a kind of Islamic awakening. They heard sermons from people who came back from jihad in Afghanistan."

The brothers disappeared for two or three months in 1999, travelling to Medina. "When they came back they were different," said their cousin. "They had grown beards and were deeply religious. They had their own group of people and had become very secretive."

In December 2000 they disappeared again, this time to Afghanistan with Al-Nami and Al-Ghamdi. The next the family heard of them was reading their names among the hijackers.

"When we read their names we were very proud because the black hand of Americans are in everything," said their cousin. "I don't think my cousins were exploited. I think they did it out of their own convictions."

David Ray Griffin Still Trying on the Airfone Thing

Well I have to give him credit for being persistent. Even after being completely embarassed by having his no airfone on AA77 thing being proven wrong on this blog, even before the claim came out in his new book, he is still trying to desperately come up with evidence to support it. I came across this e-mail on a truther mailing list I am on:

The question has come up whether the Boeing 757s made for American Airlines (as distinct from those made for United Airlines) that would have been in service in 2001 had onboard (seat-back) phones. If they did not, then obviously Ted Olson’s claim about Barbara Olson’s call from a seat-back phone on AA Flight 77 cannot be true.

We know that they did not have them in 2004 (although the 767 and 777 did). But we cannot get any clear information about whether they had them in 2001. We received a purported email from a “Chad Kinder” in public relations for AA that said that they did not. But we have been unable to verify the authenticity of this email or even whether there is a Chad Kinder who works for AA.

It would seem that there were would be all sorts of people who could answer the question, including AA mechanics, pilots, and flight attendants. If any of you can help us get this answer---hopefully within the week---we would greatly appreciate it.

Yours truly,

Rob Balsamo and David Ray Griffin

This argument is pretty silly though. This was widely publicized at the time. The odds that none of the thousands of American Airlines employees, not to mention hundreds of thousands of their passengers, would not have noticed the fact that they didn't have airfones installed on their planes is pretty farfetched. Although I don't doubt that 6 years after the fact they will be able to find a single truther, a Lauro Chavez type, who will now suddenly recall that in fact there were no airfones installed.

Well, how do we know there were phones installed? Well, I know by truther logic we are not allowed to use the 9/11 Commission report, since its findings do not support their hoped outcome, but simply read the footnotes.

57.The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four "connected calls to unknown numbers" represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband's office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only Renee May's parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls).The four calls were at 9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds; 9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds; 9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds; and 9:30:56 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report, "American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Helen Voss, Sept. 14, 2001;AAL response to the Commission's supplemental document request, Jan. 20, 2004.

So obviously both American Airlines and the FBI seem to believe that they had airfones installed. But I guess they are all involved in the plot too.

Incidently, I meant to post this earlier, but I got distracted with other things, if you want to know what type of nutcase Rob Balsamo is, read the comments on this Italian language debunking site. Not the type of argument you would expect from an aviation professional. In fact, I would not want to be flying on his plane at all.

Giuliani and Foreknowledge of the Collapse

Yes, as far as I know, Rudy's wrong when he says there was no forewarning of the possibility of collapse of the WTC towers.

"I--I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us."

As noted on page 302 of the 9-11 Commission Report (page 319 of the PDF file), "At about 9:57 an EMS paramedic approached the FDNY Chief of Department and advised that an engineer in front of 7 WTC had just remarked that the Twin Towers in fact were in imminent danger of a total collapse."

Discussion of this incident is included in the interview with EMS Division Chief John Peruggia on page 17 of the PDF file.

Winnipeg Looks Like a Hotbed of Deniers

The host of this morning program in Winnipeg, Jon Ljungberg should be ashamed of himself for promoting this quackery. Dr Joe Hawkins makes some fun points, like comparing the 9-11 "Truth" Movement to a fire hydrant. I guess that makes the debunkers dogs? He also claims that three buildings came down on 9-11; I guess he never heard of the Marriot Hotel, or St. Nick's cathedral?

Is Gore or Isn't He?

This is couched in diplomatic language, but the intention is clear. He is not buying the Bushies' excuses for September 11th 2001. He's attributing this lack of trust to the "American people," which polls on 9/11 support. But he is also going out on a political limb and making a value judgment as to whether the Bush regime "deserve" any trust on September 11th issues.

At this point in the course of the conversation, a light bulb seemed to go off in Gore's head. He sat up straight with a wary look. I suspect that at this moment he realized he was in danger of being sucked into the question of whether or not 9/11 had been yet another false flag operation in American history.

He quickly said, 'I think I see where you might be heading.' Not wishing to even say the words 'nine eleven' or the words 'false flag', he deftly trashed the ongoing 9/11 truth movement with these few words: 'All that other stuff is outside the range of possibility'.

Monday, May 28, 2007

We Couldn't Have Done it Without You!

More On Charlie

To update the story Pat just posted on whether the man who decided that sleeping with Denise Richards was a bad alternative is going to be narrating Loose Change version 4, he has now written a message posted in an article on Alex Jones' paranoid Prison Planet. At least he avoids the silly 13 year old girl Rosie speak (2 cool 2 b U) in his messages.

My views and convictions regarding the events of 9/11 have not wavered. I still firmly believe the citizens of this great country, especially the family members of those tragically lost, deserve a much more accurate and thorough investigation surrounding the horrific events.

The suspicious fact that certain relevant testimonies were not included in the Keen Commission's final report, discredits the majority of their findings. A bi-partisan, democratically selected panel needs to be established that would include (but not limited to), victim family members, firefighters, rescue workers as well as key eye witnesses to the various crime scenes. Not some tepid rehash of Bush-serving lap-dogs cherry picking evidence to support erroneous and fictional "Magic Bullet" explanations.

We will not tolerate any testimony behind closed doors from subjects not placed "Under Oath". We will not tolerate the real and hard questions being dismissed for reasons of "National Security". We will not tolerate our freedom of speech being dismantled and ignored as not to "Disrespect the deceased".

I'm baffled as well by the fact Bin Laden's crimes listed on the FBI's most wanted list DO NOT include those of 9/11. If you do not believe me, see for yourselves -

As far as "Loose Change- Final Cut" is concerned, I await the newest version to be presented to me, at which point I will make my decision to participate (or not) based on the film's content and merit.

Alex Jones Claims Charlie Still A Truther, May Do Loose Change FC

This may just be an attempt to put a happy face on the apparent inability to come to some sort of agreement on financial terms, but Jones claims that Sheen has final approval:

In contributing to this article, Alex made it clear that Loose Change is still a work in progress and is being carefully edited, vetted and fact checked, with new interviews and information being added all the time. The film is by no means complete and the understanding all along was that Sheen would only make a decision on whether to narrate the documentary after he had had a chance to watch the final version.

Nice to know they've got an adult like Sheen exercising final creative control. ;) And you've gotta wonder if Dylan's really going to hit his week before 9-11-07 target date for opening if he's still at the point where he's adding new material.

Jones tries to blast the Post for reporting Sheen's narration as a done deal. I don't recall if the Loosers have ever claimed that Charlie's on board or not, but they've certainly done nothing to discourage that speculation.

My views and convictions regarding the events of 9/11 have not wavered. I still firmly believe the citizens of this great country, especially the family members of those tragically lost, deserve a much more accurate and thorough investigation surrounding the horrific events.

The suspicious fact that certain relevant testimonies were not included in the Keen Commission's final report, discredits the majority of their findings. A bi-partisan, democratically selected panel needs to be established that would include (but not limited to), victim family members, firefighters, rescue workers as well as key eye witnesses to the various crime scenes. Not some tepid rehash of Bush-serving lap-dogs cherry picking evidence to support erroneous and fictional "Magic Bullet" explanations.

Possibly the Stupidest Theory in the History of Ever

Just when I think they can't possibly get any stupider, one of the bloggers over at 911 Blogger proves me wrong, with an idiotic theory that since the evidence shows that the hijackers did exist (OK that part I actually agree with) then they might have been super-secret commandos who parachuted from the plane just before impact:

But is it possible that the hijackers were indeed professional agents, disguised as Arabs, who had no intention of dying when the planes crashed? There is only one way to escape a moving airplane, and that is with a parachute. Could the agents have hijacked the planes, then rigged the cockpits for remote navigation to their targets-- then, with the passengers herded to the backs of the planes, have bailed out to safety from the cargo holds of the planes?

Such a scenario seems like something from a James Bond film. But the distinct possibility of its occurrence was brought to my attention when I read a few excerpts from a book written by ex- Navy SEAL Chuck Pfarrer.

Even more infuriating is that this idiot can't even get the most basic facts about the victims right.

The phone call allegedly from Todd Beumer [sic], who supposedly called a Verizon [sic]phone operator (instead of his pregnant wife) and chatted with her for 45 minutes [sic]-- a conversation in which he recited a prayer which his wife had never heard from him before.

The phone call lasted for about 13 minutes, not 45. If you are going to insult the victims with your idiotic theories, the least you could do is learn how to spell their names correctly.

The prayer "his wife had never heard from him before" incidently, was the 23rd Psalm, possibly the most famous verse in the Bible.

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:He leadeth me beside the still waters.He restoreth my soul:He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

The idea that this would be strange for a religious Christian to be reciting only moments before he died, is well, idiotic beyond belief.

Terrific Debunking Short Film!

Our buddy Undesired Walrus from JREF (who by the way was the guy who discovered that comic strip generator I've been using) has put his talents to work making a short film of quotes that work to debunk Loose Change on Shanksville, WTC 7 and the Pentagon. Highly recommended!

Solid Takedown of the Pentacon

Proving once again that the 9-11 Deniers are capable of solid work when debunking theories that they don't agree with, Arabesque does a masterful job of demolishing the Pentacon movie.

The fatal Special Pleading argument of the PentaCon in summary:

A person saw X and Y. X and Y could not have both happened—it is impossible. Therefore X happened and Y did not.

“The PentaCon witnesses saw a plane fly north of the CITGO Gas station (X) and the plane hit the Pentagon (Y). It is impossible that they witnessed both. Therefore the plane did not hit the Pentagon.”

If both X and Y could not have happened, what basis do the filmmakers have for ignoring the possibility that Y happened instead of X? They don’t have any basis—they simply claim that they saw X, therefore Y didn’t happen. They don’t consider the opposite possibility. Actually their argument is even more absurd than this:

The problem facing anybody trying to make a buck off the 9-11 Denial Movement is that they must come up with something that is a) new, b) fits the currently accepted general theory, and c) is not so kooky that it's going to "discredit" the movement. The Pentacon succeeds on a) and b), but falls apart on c).

Some People You Don't Want to Hire to Design Your Building

The group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth has finally launched its long awaited website, although to no surprise I could find no list of their scores of purported experts. The list of reasons the WTC was demolished on their homepage was laughably bad. Here is the list for WTC7:

1. Rapid onset of “collapse”

2 Sounds of explosions at ground floor - a full second prior to collapse (heard by hundreds of firemen and media reporters)

3. Symmetrical “collapse” – through the path of greatest resistance – at free-fall speed — the columns gave no resistance

It wasn't a rapid onset, you could see it coming. Ironically they later comment that people had foreknowledge of the collapse. It was unexpected, except when it wasn't...

4. Squibs, or “mistimed” explosions, at the upper 7 floors seen in the network videos

Since when was a squib a "mistimed" explosion? I thought their whole point was that this was some precision demolition, conducted by professionals and fooling the world. Now they are claiming it was screwed up? And as for the "collapses into its own footprint", hold that thought for a minute...

Actually their "expert corroboration" a total of one guy, Danny Jowenko, extends only to WTC7, he specifically states that the twin towers were not demolished. For some reason that is not listed here as a reason the twin towers were not demolished. I guess his expert status ran out. And he did not conduct a scientific analysis of the collapse, he watched a Youtube video.

And what is with this "fore-knowledge" [sic], I thought this was sudden and unexpected?

Now the list for the twin towers is a lot of the same garbage, but remember the "into its own footprint" point? Well here it is again:

So let's get that straight. If it falls into its own footprint, that is evidence of controlled demolition, except in cases where it doesn't fall into its own footprint, in which case that is evidence of controlled demolition!

He then lists what was missing from the collapse:

And exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e.

1. Slow onset with large visible deformations

Hello, maybe all of you elite engineers should actually try reading the engineering report done on this.

Update: I finally found their membership list. In typical truther fashion, they admit anyone, including surveyors, urban planners and electrical engineers.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Infallible Norm Mineta?

It's clear that Loose Change Final Cut is going to highlight Norm Mineta's testimony before the 9-11 Commission as a "smoking gun" of the standdown order they believe the US Air Force was given that day. Of course, just about everybody who's looked at Mineta's testimony has realized that the guy was just about an hour off on his timeframes; once you adjust for that his testimony fits. And it's not like there isn't abundant evidence in his account that he gets times wrong. Check out this interview from 2006:

You mean ground all the planes?

Norman Mineta: Ground all the planes. We already had a ground hold on planes going into New York. Any plane that was going to leave from Atlanta heading to New York, those planes were left on the ground in Atlanta. That happened maybe about 8:30 or 8:40 in the morning. Now this is about 9:27.

Mmmkay, so Norm Mineta thinks there was a groundhold on NY-bound flights at 8:30 or 8:40 AM, before even the first crash? And of course Mineta's way off on his 9:27 estimate as well. For example, he's already described that when he arrived at the White House:

As we went in West Executive Drive, people pouring out of the Executive Office building, people running out of the White House, and I said to my driver and security guy, "Is there something wrong with this picture? We are driving in, and everybody else is running away."

But people were not running away from the White House before the Pentagon strike; that just shows how confused Mineta is on his timeline.

We Forgot About Rosie's Video Blog!

Kudos to News Buckit for sending this our way. Rosie and the makeup gal (Helene) exchange thoughts yesterday evening about the nuclear explosion that happened on The View this week, while tippling a bit of wine and Sam Adams. Janet, who usually makes up the third part of the "Jahero" blog is banished for this v-log for her mustache-drawing escapade. Apparently Rosie will appear one final time on the show, a pretaped bit Monday for Elisabeth's birthday, and Rosie seems to gloat a bit that this will show her being so nice to Lis, how could she have stabbed Ro in the back like that?

She doesn't talk much about the 9-11 quackery here. She falls back on the wheeze that "If only it was about Bin Laden; it seems he's Bin Forgotten".

She says late in the piece that she "Supports Lynndie England, because I was never one of those rich quite guys." Coming from a rich white broad....

Rosie seems to be auditioning for the role of Hamlet with all the sighing and glum commentary. Cheered me up to no end!

Griffin Buys Into Voice-Morphing for Phone Calls

Sheesh, this one's so absurd that even Dylan Avery has decided to "pull" it from Loose Change FC. In his Vancouver speech (MP3 file here), Griffin buys into some of the wackiest nonsense the 9-11 Denial Cult has come up with (42:00):

"But how does the 9-11 Truth Movement handle the fact that so many relatives of passengers claimed that they received calls from these passengers? Are we--do we have to charge that they're all lying or that they were deluded? No, although there was not the cellphone technology at that time to explain their--these flights (sic) there was another kind of technology called voice-morphing. It was already sufficiently perfected in 1999 as demonstrated by a test involving the voice of General Carl Steiner (sp?) who was quite well-known. As a Washington Post story reported, General Steiner was heard to say, 'Gentlemen, we have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States Government.' Everybody in that room would have sworn that that was General Steiner. There is even a device that can fake the Caller ID Number. The technology was available in other words to fool the people who received these calls, to make them think they were really hearing voices of their loved ones. Whether Ted Olsen was a victim of this trickery or whether he simply lied about the call from his wife, is something we will not know until there is a real investigation into 9-11.

I would encourage Dr. Griffin to listen to Cee Cee Lyles phone call from Flight 93 to her husband's answering machine (presented at the Moussaoui trial), and tell us once again that he thinks that phone call was made via voice-morphing technology.

One of the things that continually amazes me about the 9-11 Deniers is the way they believe the government created this incredibly complex and vast plot but forgot to handle little things like putting the names of the hijackers on the flight manifests (yet another ridiculous claim that Griffin recycles).

Update: Note also that although Griffin states that he does not believe the families were "deluded", in fact he actually does believe it. Deluded means deceived. Griffin appears to be confusing deluded with delusional, which means "a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact." Like David Ray Griffin's false belief that the phone calls were faked.

Page Six: More Details on Rosie, Sheen

A source tells us Charlie Sheen "is having second thoughts" about being involved in an updated version of the flick, which has a huge following on YouTube. As Page Six reported in March, Sheen had agreed to narrate the ridiculous flick, presumably to give it some needed Hollywood sizzle.

And here's an additional detail about Ro's exit from the view:

O'Donnell reportedly had booked the film's producers, Korey Rowe and Dylan Avery, on Thursday's show. But after getting into a fight with Elisabeth Hasselbeck Wednesday, and after her chief writer was caught defacing Hasselbeck's photos with mustaches, O'Donnell left the show.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

One Last Shot of 9-11 Denial on the View

Ro leads with Willie Rodriguez and the poor man with his skin falling off, as usual assuming this means explosives. But of course the man was burned by the fireball that traveled down the elevator shaft--even Willie used to admit that. She goes on to raving about WTC 7 being omitted from the 9-11 Commission Report, like the 9-11 Commission was concerned about a building in which nobody died, which was not a direct target of the attacks. The 9-11 Commission report also did not mention St. Nick's Cathedral, which was also destroyed. Oooooh, mysterious.

The OEM's headquarters was located at 7 WTC. Some questioned locating it both so close to a previous terrorist target and on the 23rd floor of a building (difficult to access should elevators become inoperable).

Page 310:

By 8:48, officials in OEM headquarters on the 23rd floor of 7 WTC....

Page 319:

"At about 9:57 an EMS paramedic approached the FDNY Chief of Department and advised that an engineer in front of 7 WTC had just remarked that the Twin Towers in fact were in imminent danger of total collapse."

Page 322:

"After the South Tower was hit, OEM senior leadership decided to remain in its "bunker" and continue conducting operations even though all civilians had been evacuated from 7 WTC. At approximately 9:30 a senior OEM official ordered the evacuation of the facility after a Secret Service agent in 7 WTC advised him that additional commercial planes were not accounted for."

Update: Yet moron Ro! Ro and her makeup gal exchange video blog thoughts about the nuclear exchange between Ro and Lis last night; the makeup gal (Helene) seems to be half in the bag. Janet is banished from the v-blog for her mustache-drawing escapade. Apparently Ro will appear on Monday for one more episode of the View, a pretaped one for Elisabeth's birthday. If you can't see the vblog over at News Buckit (I couldn't) you can also check it at Ro's blog.

Standards of Evidence

One of the basic tenets of troofer logic is that any evidence which contradicts their theory is inherently fake, because, well it contradicts their theory so it must be fake. How could anyone believe it to be true? Duh!

A example of this is given by David Ray Griffin in yet another radio interview:

Now with regard to 9/11 the signs that it is a false flag operation with planted evidence is manifold. Let me give one example. They claim they found the suitcase of Mohammed Atta, that was supposed to get on flight 11, the first flight that hit the World Trade Center. And when they opened the suitcase they found all sorts of incriminating evidence, a Koran, instructions about flying Boeing airplanes. Instructions to other hijackers and so on. It also contained Mohammed Atta’s will. If you were going to fly a plane into the World Trade Center that was going to create an enormous fireball, would you take your will?

Well, OK. I could say that personally in the unlikely event that I were in this situation, I would probably not pack my will along, but how can you completely dismiss the existence of the suitcase based entirely on this? How does he know what Atta's intent was? Maybe he intended to mail it but forgot? Maybe he intended to give it to a friend but never had a chance? Maybe he wanted to change it but never got around to it? Maybe he didn't want it to be left behind as evidence, so he figured bringing it along would all but insure its destruction? Let's suppose for a minute for argument's sake that it was a fake, and we can tell it was a fake because it would be absurd to find a will under these circumstances. OK, well if some idiot on the Internet can "figure this out", than wouldn't the CIA operatives who went to all this trouble to create and plant this evidence know this too? You can't claim evidence is fake simply based on the fact that you don't find it convenient.

Griffin incidently also goes on to repeat his Marvin Bush connected to WTC myth (after listening to a good half dozen of these interviews, he says very little new in each one). He keeps changing his story though. Just a couple of weeks ago he said:

Another possible explanation comes from the fact that uh, a company that was involved with security for the World Trade Center has as its Chief Executive Officer Wirt Walker III who is a cousin of George Bush and another principal in the company was Marvin Bush, George’s brother.

Now he claims:

Well one of those a priori objections is, how could anyone get into the towers to plant the explosives, that takes dozens of hours and lots of people? Well, a little fact that the 9/11 Commission didn't reveal might be helpful here, that Marvin Bush, the President's brother was one of the principals of a company that handled security for the World Trade Center. So you see, well maybe there would be a way they could get in there. And also the Chief Operating Officer was Wirt Walker III who is a somewhat distant cousin of there's.

The fact is, Wirt Walker III has no known relation to the Bush family, the fact that Griffin can now only claim that they are "somewhat distant cousins" is indicative of this. He was also the CEO, not the COO, Griffin apparently can't make up his mind what his position was.

David Ray Griffin--115 Things He Gets Wrong

Our buddy Gumboot from the JREF Forum has started to put together a formal debunking of David Ray Griffin's 115 Omissions and Distortions by the 9-11 Commission. These are rigorous, logical and incredibly well-written debunkings that he has kindly agreed to allow us to mirror over here. Here's his introduction:

DISTORTION OF FACT

A Comprehensive Analysis of The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie by Dr David Ray Griffin.

Throughout this document the phrases “The 9/11 Commission Report” and “The Report” refer to the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (ISBN 0-393-32671-3). “The 9/11 Commission” and “The Commission” refers to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon The Unites States – the Government-appointed body which produced The Report.

INTRODUCTION

At this site, Dr David Ray Griffin – a retired professor of philosophy of religion and theology – summarises part of his book; The 9/11 Commission Report: Omission And Distortions – by listing 115 points of contention which he asserts are omission and distortions in the report, amounting to lies (herein “The Essay”).

The Essay begins:

Quote:

In discussing my second 9/11 book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, I have often said, only half in jest, that a better title might have been "a 571-page lie." (Actually, I was saying "a 567-page lie," because I was forgetting to count the four pages of the Preface.)In making this statement, one of my points has been that the entire Report is constructed in support of one big lie: that the official story about 9/11 is true.Another point, however, is that in the process of telling this overall lie, The 9/11 Commission Report tells many lies about particular issues. This point is implied by my critique's subtitle, "Omissions and Distortions." It might be thought, to be sure, that of the two types of problems signaled by those two terms, only those designated "distortions" can be considered lies.It is better, however, to understand the two terms as referring to two types of lies: implicit and explicit. We have an explicit lie when the Report claims that the core of each of the Twin Towers consisted of a hollow steel shaft or when it claims that Vice President Cheney did not give the shoot-down order until after 10:10 that morning.But we have an implicit lie when the Commission, in its discussion of the 19 alleged suicide hijackers, omits the fact that at least six of them have credibly been reported to be still alive, or when it fails to mention the fact that Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed. Such omissions are implicit lies partly because they show that the Commission did not honor its stated intention "to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11."

This analysis will attempt to determine the validity of Dr Griffin’s allegations by either affirming or rejecting each of his claims.

METHODOLOGY

The most common definition of “lie” is a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive. However for the benefit of this paper, rather than determine whether each lie alleged by Dr Griffin is indeed a lie (that is a deliberate effort to deceive on the part of the Commission) I will investigate the validity of the alternative claim raised by each of the allegations.

As example, the following statements:

1. The lie of distortion that the car belonged to my father.2. The lie of omission that the car had six wheels.

From the perspective of determining whether each point is indeed a lie, it is essential to determine whether the Report was aware of the distortions or omission inherent in their claims, and to demonstrate that the Commission knowingly presented this false information (or failed to present this true information) with the intention of deceiving the reader.

Such a procedure is inherently difficult as I am not privy to the minds of the Commission members (as Dr Griffin, also, is not).

Instead, I intend to examine the alternative claim of fact which is inherent in each point of contention.

In example 1) above, “the lie of distortion that the car belonged to my father” contains the inherent claim of fact that the car did not belong to my father.

Likewise in example 2) “the lie of omission that the car had six wheels” contains the inherent claim of fact that the car did have six wheels.

To extend the metaphor, rather than determine whether the writer of the Report knew the inherent truths mentioned above, and intentionally deceived, I instead intend to consider the inherent claims themselves and determine their validity.

The methodology shall be displayed thus:

ALLEGATION OF FALSEHOOD (“THE ALLEGATION”)The lie of distortion that the car belonged to my father.

CONFIRMATION OF THE CLAIMOn page 36 of the report it is claimed that the car belonged to my father.OR ALTERNATIVELYAt no point in the report is it claimed that the car belonged to my father.

Quote:

Although determination that the claim was never made automatically constitutes rejection of the allegation as false, I shall nonetheless proceed and investigate the validity of the inherent claim.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE INHERENT CLAIM:The inherent claim of this allegation is that the car did not belong to my father.

INVESTIGATION OF THE INHERENT CLAIM:A detailed analysis of the inherent claim, determining as far as possible its validity. Sources for this section will be comprehensive. This section will constitute the major part of the work.

AFFIRMATION OR REJECTION OF THE INHERENT CLAIM:The claim is correct; my father did not own the car – it was registered under my mother’s name.OR ALTERNATIVELYThe claim is false; my father purchased the car on date X, registered it in his name, and renewed said registration in his name for a further 14 years to the present.

Although the 115 omissions and distortions listed by Dr Griffin in the essay are presented as distinct allegations, in fact some of them relate to the same claims. In these instances I have grouped the allegations together and responded to them collectively.

Numbers in parentheses at the end of each allegation refer to the pages of The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions in which the allegation is discussed.

Claim One

115 ALLEGATIONS OF OMISSION AND DISTORTION

Quote:

1. The omission of evidence that at least six of the alleged hijackers — including Waleed al-Shehri, said by the Commission probably to have stabbed a flight attendant on Flight 11 before it crashed into the North Tower of the WTC — are still alive (19-20).

The Report claims that all of the nineteen alleged hijackers are dead, and died during the attacks. The first chapter of the Report We Have Some Planes (pg.1-46) identifies the hijackers and allocates them amongst the four hijacked flights as follows:

At 8:46:40, American 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. All on board, along with an unknown number of people in the tower, were killed instantly. (pg.7)

Quote:

At 9:03:11, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. All on board, along with an unknown number of people in the tower, were killed instantly. (pg.8)

Quote:

At 9:37:46, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, travelling at approximately 530 miles per hour. All on board, as well as many civilian and military personnel in the building, were killed. (pg.10)

Quote:

With the sounds of the passengers counterattack continuing, the aircraft [United 93] plowed into an empty field in Shankesville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington, D.C.(pg.14)

For the purposes of this paper I have made the assumption that the Commission do not believe anyone on board United 93 survived the impact described above.

Quote:

The claim inherent in the allegations is that at least six of the alleged hijackers are still alive.

These claims originate in the days immediately after September 11, 2001 as the FBI began what would become the largest criminal investigation in the agency’s history.

On September 14th the FBI released a list with the names of nineteen middle-eastern men they believed were the hijackers.

Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the suicide attacks on Washington and New York has turned up alive and well.The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused of having carried out the attacks are now in doubt.

A Telegraph article, also of 23rd September 2001, cites four individuals who claim the hijackers stole their identities.

This article cites the Saudi engineer from the BBC article; Abdulaziz Al-Omari. It also cites Saeed Al-Ghamdi and indicates he is also a pilot from Saudi Arabia. The article further cites two other hijackers; Salem Al-Hamzi (worker at Yanbu Industrial City, Saudi Arabia) and Ahmed Al-Nami (administrator for Saudi Arabian Airlines, Saudi Arabia).

Momentarily ignoring variations of spelling, this gives a total of seven individuals claiming identity as six of the alleged hijackers.

It is important to note that these articles were written based on a preliminary name-only list of hijackers. An official list of the hijackers – with photographs – was released on 27th September.

On the 6th of February 2002 Saudi Arabia officially acknowledged that 15 of the 19 hijackers were their citizens, as reported by USA Today:

Quote:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia acknowledged for the first time that 15 of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers were Saudi citizens, but said Wednesday that the oil-rich kingdom bears no responsibility for their actions.

Eight of the nineteen hijackers have, at various times, been identified as being alive by the media. A detailed investigation of each individual claim follows.

Abdulaziz Al OmariThis allegation arose from the BBC articled quoted previously. In this article the Al Omari cited is an engineer with Saudi Telecoms. He claimed his passport was lost whilst studying in Denver, USA. A second man with the same name is cited in the same BBC article. He claimed to be a pilot with Saudi Arabian Airlines.

Obviously, if two individuals are claiming to be the same hijacker, there has been confusion. Either one, or both of them are in error.

Once photos were released of the hijackers it became obvious that Al Omari the engineer was an entirely different person to Al Omari the hijacker.

However that still left Al Omari the Saudi Airlines pilot. On 16th September 2001 CNN broadcast Al Omari the pilot’s photo, identifying him as the pilot of AA11. However, the FBI quickly determined that Mohamed Atta was the pilot of AA11, not Al Omari the hijacker.

The CNN have since apologised to Al Omari for this confusion, and conducted an interview with him. In the interview and from his September 16 photograph it is clear he is not the Al Omari presented in photographs issued by the FBI on 27th September.

So what about Al Omari the hijacker? According to Saudi Information Agency, Al Omari the hijacker was 23; much younger than either of the other Al Omaris. He studied religion at university, where he befriended a number of clerics. In December 2000 he left for Afghanistan where he trained in Kandahar and fought alongside the Taliban.

Ahmed Al-NamiThis allegation arose from the Telegraph article, and identifies a 33yr old administrative supervisor with Saudi Arabian Airlines based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

However the profile for Al-Nami the hijacker is very different. Like Al Omari, he was young and also trained at a religious university. According to his friends and family, in 1999 he started to become highly religious, so much so that his family feared he had bipolar disorder. In December 2000 he left on a trip to Mecca. His family never saw him again, although they received a phone call from him in June 2001. It is believed that we went to Afghanistan to train in Kandahar, just like Al Omari.

Khalid Al MihdharThis allegation arises in the BBC article, where it is speculated he “might be alive”.

A Saudi computer programmer called Khalid Al-Mihammadi claimed in September 2001 that the photo initially released by the FBI was him. However the article that released this information also revealed that the FBI initially released two alternative names - Khalid Al Mihdhar and Khalid Al-Mihammadi – with different photographs for each. Which means Al-Mihammadi the computer programmer is not Al Mihdhar the hijacker.

Indeed, Khalid Al Mihdhar the hijacker was an Al Qaeda veteran. In 1995 he travelled to Bosnia with fellow 9/11 Hijacker Nawaf al Hazmi to join the Bosnian Muslims in their war against the Bosnian Serbs. After this he travelled to Afghanistan where he joined Al Qaeda and fought against the Afghan Northern Alliance. According to his family, in 1998 he fought in Chechnya.

Mohammed AttaThe allegation that Atta is still alive originates from his father. His father’s story has changed dramatically over time, making his assertions unreliable. Here’s some highlights:

In this interview Atta Senior denies his son was involved in the attacks.

Quote:

"Mohamed. Oh God! He is so decent, so shy and tender," said the father, a 65-year-old retired lawyer. "He was so gentle. I used to tell him, 'Toughen up, boy!'"Mr. Atta stood on the barren concrete doorstep of his 11th-floor Cairo apartment today, alternating between rage at the picture being painted of his son as one of the attack's ringleaders and pride that his boy had done well abroad after graduating with average marks in architecture from Cairo University's Faculty of Engineering.

Atta’s father also makes a number of other claims throughout the interview:

Quote:

-He called the USA a “Tyrant Nation”, criticising it for supporting Israel, and for moral contagions such as adultery and same-sex marriage.-He said he believed his son had gone to the USA for further education.-He said that his son may have been murdered, and his documents stolen.-He said his son had last been in Egypt a year ago (late 2000).-He said someone like Mossad had the capacity to plan the attacks, but not his son.-He said he was sure his son was still alive, and that his son was afraid of flying.

-Upon opening the door for the journalist he immediately declared that Mossad killed his son.-He then lectured on Mossad and its “ugly history”, concluding that they kidnapped his son and stole his identity.-In this interview he claims that his son called him during the day of 12 September (night of 11/12th in New York) and that at the time he knew nothing of the attacks. He asserts that Mossad forced his son to make the phone call “to cause controversy”. It is worth noting that he makes no mention of this phone call in his earlier interview with the New York Times.-Atta Senior claims in this interview that he last saw his son in October 1999 – a full year removed from what he claimed in the previous interview. He states that his son then returned to his studies in Germany, calling once a month.-In this interview he claims he always assumed Atta was calling from Germany, and that he had no knowledge his son had ever been to the USA. This also is a direct contradiction of his earlier claims.

In this interview his story changes again. He claims that Atta is still alive, and in hiding from US Intelligence Agents so that they don’t kill him.Rather than blame 9/11 on Mossad, this time Atta Senior blames it on “American Christians”.He also expressed a fear that the US would try to poison him. He reiterated his previous claim that his son had called him on the 12th, stating that it had been around midday (0500 EDT). He also recounted his return home on the night of the 12th (midday EDT). His daughter called him, arrived at the house, and told him to turn on his television. At this point he first sees news footage of the aircraft hitting the towers and his son’s photo.

Two years later, in an Associated Press interview on the 3rd anniversary of the attacks, Atta Senior first blames Mossad for the attacks, and then God (as punishment for the USA’s evil). He proposes that a Palestinian who rams an aircraft into the White House killing President George Bush and his family will go to heaven.

This time around he declares that “without stopping to think about it” he knew 9/11 was carried out by Mossad and “American right-wing extremists the neoconservatives”.After declaring that no one has presented any facts to demonstrate that his son and Osama Bin Laden carried out the attacks, Atta Senior then proceeds to offer some “facts” of his own:-4,000 Jewish workers at the WTC did not turn up on 9/11-101 businessmen were supposed to be on AA11 on 9/11 but did not board and did not cancel their tickets.-On 10 September the FBI recorded two US Congressmen calling two separate newspapers with the message “It’s zero-hour. The game starts tomorrow.”-On the morning of 9/11 the pilot of AA11 (John Ogonowski) handed two workers at Boston Airport a video tape explaining the plan for the attacks.-Japanese Intelligence published a report with details of the four pilots of the hijacked flights, all of whom were American, had served in the Vietnam War, and belonged to secret Christian societies.-Jewish owners of stocks of the Airlines and Insurance companies involved in 9/11 sold their stock for high prices on 1st September in Europe, repurchasing them on 17th September once prices crashed.Atta Senior points out that initially Islamic Terrorists were blamed for the Oklahoma City Bombing. He claims that Timothy McVeigh’s last words were “Revenge will come in September”.He further claims that “four or six Israelis” videotaped the crashes in Manhattan, standing in the middle of the street, singing in Hebrew, and dancing in a circle at the moment of the attack. He alleges they were videoing the aircraft when it was a mere speck in the sky, thus indicating they knew where it would be coming from.

This interview was two weeks after the July 7 bombings in London, and Atta senior expresses his desire to see more of such attacks. He predicts that 9/11 and the July Bombings are the beginning of what will be a 50 year religious war in which there will be more fighters like his son.

This is a significant divergence from earlier claims. Previously he had asserted that his son was not political and not especially religious. Now he asserts that his son was a fighter in a 50 year religious war.

He cursed Arab and Muslim leaders who condemned the London Bombings as traitors and non-Muslims, and expressed his desire to encourage more attacks. When CNN asked permission to conduct another interview he demanded $5,000 which he said he would use to fund another attack like the London Bombings.

CNN declined.

As we can see, Mohammed Atta’s father cannot be considered a reliable source. His story continuously changes, is self-contradicting, and he is clearly heavily biased in the subject matters at hand. He is also clearly poorly informed regarding 9/11 – every single one of the claims he makes in the EgyptToday interview is totally false.

Other records of Atta’s life paint a very different picture. His fellow students in Germany recall him abruptly changing after a long trip away (which video evidence indicates was a trip to Afghanistan). He came back very religious, political, and wearing a beard. As the leader of the 19 hijackers, Atta spent much longer in the USA than most of the conspirators, and records of his movements – including a traffic violation, financial transactions, and purchases with a credit card in his name, leave a very solid evidence trail that supports the official version of events.

Saeed al-GhamdiAgain it is the BBC article of 23 September that identifies al-Ghamdi as alive. According to their report a London-based Arabic newspaper called Asharq Al Awsat interviewed him after the attacks. The Telegraph article of the same day expanded on this reference.

According to their story, as with Al Omari, al-Ghamdi was a Saudi pilot. As with Al Omari, his picture was broadcast on CNN to the world. Saeed claims he was in Tunis at the time with 20 other students learning to fly the Airbus A320.

Like Al Omari, al-Ghamdi had previously studied at the same Florida flight school that some of the hijackers used. A clear pattern arises. Just as with Al Omari, the photograph released by the FBI on 27th September was not al-Ghamdi the pilot.

The Germany newspaper Der Spiegel investigated some of the hijacker-alive claims, and interviewed Mohammed Samman – the reporter who talked to al-Ghamdi the Saudi pilot. Samman was happy to confirm that the al-Ghamdi in the FBI’s suspect photographs issued on 27 September was not the pilot he had talked to.

But what of al-Ghamdi the hijacker?

According to a Boston Globe article of March 2002, al-Ghamdi and three other 9/11 Hijackers from the same area of Saudi Arabia (Wael and Walid Alshehri and Ahmed Alnami) met at the Al Farouq training camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The same Al Qaeda camp where other 9/11 hijackers trained. In 2000 these four hijackers, including al-Ghamdi, dedicated themselves to Jihad in a Saudi mosque, according to local clerics and friends.

In March 2001 al-Ghamdi appeared in an Al Qaeda “farewell” video broadcast on Al Jazeera. In the video he is seen studying flight maps and training manuals, and declares the USA “the enemy”. He appears in the video with other 9/11 hijackers.

Salem Al-HamziAl-Hamzi is one of two sets of brothers amongst the 9/11 Hijackers. The doubt over his identity arises from the Telegraph article, where it cites a petrochemical worker from the Yanbu Industrial City in Saudi Arabia. However Al-Hamzi the worker is a different age to Al-Hamzi the alleged hijacker, has never been to the USA (the FBI cited Al-Hamzi the hijacker’s residence as in New Jersey), and perhaps most odd of all, makes no mention of the accusations laid against his presumably also innocent brother Nawaf. Could it be this particular Al-Hamzi doesn’t have a brother called Nawaf, and is, indeed, an entirely different person?

The Saudi Information Agency seems to be talking about an entirely different Al-Hamzi. According to them, the two Al-Hamzi brothers were from Makkah, and left Saudi Arabia in March 2000 to train at the same Kandahar camp where the other alleged hijackers trained. Sound familiar?

Wail and Waleed Al-ShehriThere’s no less than three claims to the identity of the second pair of brothers to take part in the 9/11 hijacking. The first , Waleed Al-Shehri, appeared in the BBC article previously mentioned, and was a pilot in Casablanca. He denied having a brother called Wail, or knowing anyone in his family called Wail. His claim is that a friend saw his photo, however this story appeared before the FBI released the photographs. We can trace this photograph back to the same CNN news broadcast in which many other hijackers were displayed with photographs of entirely innocent men.

Al-Shehri the pilot also trained at the school in Florida where others such as Al-Omari trained. Further confirmation came from the investigation conducted by Der Spiegel. In their article they claim the pilot from Morocco was not called Waleed Al-Shehri at all, but Walid Al-Shri; the mistake appears to be a result of the transliteration of his Arabic name.

Another claim was that the two brothers were sons of a Saudi diplomat based in Bombay. The diplomat in question was identified as Ahmed Al-Shehri, and these claims arose in Saudi media shortly after the attacks.

''I have no idea. Maybe,'' said al-Shehri, who worked as an attache at the Saudi embassy in Washington until 1996. ''How do I know? We have a half-million Shehris in Saudi Arabia.''

A day later, in a 16 September article, the Washington Post reports that Ahmed Al-Shehri denied the two alleged hijackers were his sons.

The FBI identified Waleed as Waleed M Al-Shehri, and this single often-excluded middle initial may hold the answer. In Saudi Arabian naming tradition, the last name refers to the tribal name, sometimes including hundreds of thousands of members, as demonstrated by Al-Shehri the diplomat. The middle name for men is usually taken from the father. In the case of Ahmen Al-Shehri, a son called Waleed would have the middle initial A – for Ahmed.

In a further NBC interview a living brother of the hijackers – Saleh – stated that he felt his brothers were dead and had been brainwashed.

In a Telegraph article a cousin of the brothers claimed that after a trip to Medina in 1999 they changed, growing beards, becoming very religious, and shunning their former friends.

The Saudi Information Agency profile on the brothers indicates that they were religious, and left Saudi Arabia to train at Al Qaeda’s Kandahar camp in Afghanistan.

This certainly accounts for the claims from living people that they were the suspects named. However this doesn’t of course mean the hijackers are indeed dead.

In the wake of the attacks an extensive FBI investigation was conducted. Given the suicidal nature of the attacks, the hijackers were not especially concerned about hiding their tracks, and as such the investigation uncovered a substantial amount of evidence implicating the nineteen hijackers. The tickets for the flights were registered in their names, and video surveillance captured the hijackers of AA11, UA175, and AA77 as they passed through airport security. There was no video surveillance at the security gate for UA93.

Calls from passengers and crew on each of the four flights identified the hijackers as middle-eastern, and on some flights their seat numbers were identified. The nineteen hijackers are the only people on any of the four flights with Arabic names.

A further trail of evidence puts all of the 9/11 hijackers through Al Qaeda’s training camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as previously discussed.

Lastly, martyr videos for many of the hijackers exist which depict their targets behind them.

These have been assembled into a comprehensive series of videos which present compelling evidence that Al Qaeda and the nineteen hijackers did indeed carry out the attacks.

The series is titled “The Usual Suspects”

There is substantial evidence to support the contention that the nineteen named hijackers were indeed responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and died that day. The evidence supporting the contention that they are still alive is weak, and close investigation reveals that those who came forward as the hijackers were simple cases of mistaken identity.

Quote:

The inherent claim that at least six of the hijackers are still alive is rejected.

Friday, May 25, 2007

David Ray Griffin's Earlier Writing

I suspect that most people looking at Griffin's 9-11 books have been disinclined to take a look at his earlier works, since he is generally described as a theologian. However, I found that the Phoenix Public Library offers online access to some of his earlier books and at least one of them is rather interesting.

In 1997, Griffin published a book entitled, Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality: A Postmodern Exploration. I've read a little bit of it online and it absolutely fits in perfectly with Griffin's 9-11 nuttiness, and marks him as a kook of the Barbara Honegger school.

In the book, Griffin makes some pretty wild claims for parapsychology, saying that a new type of experiment known as a Ganzfeld in conjunction with meta-level analysis has shown that Psi powers do exist. (Discussion here). Griffin leaps off from there to anecdotal evidence in favor of just about every kooky parapsychology claim, from life after death (Griffin in a memorable bit of quackery on page 151 estimates the odds of it happening at 50/50) to mediums, to possession to reincarnation (Shirley MacLaine was right!) to apparitions to out of body experiences.

More important than the crackpottery, which we've come to expect from the Guru of the 9-11 Denial Movement, is the similarity of the arguments. In his recent Vancouver lecture, Griffin harped on the fact that a lot of "respectable" people are part of the 9-11 Truthers, citing in particular Bishop Bob Bowman, Andreas Von Bulow, and (believe it or not) the inmates at Pilots for 9-11 Truth. So it is with his parapsychology book. Why look, a bunch of people like the former professor of moral philosophy at Trinity College in the 1800s believed in parapsychology!

As Griffin rails about a priori rejections of the 9-11 tinfoil hat crowd now, in 1997 he was bemoaning the a priori debunkings of psychic loonies. Indeed, substitute his bitter complaints about CSICOP (a parapsychology debunking group) for Popular Mechanics and you'd just about have the equivalent of Debunking 9-11 Debunking. James Randi even comes in for a bit of bashing!

The Loose Change Curse Strikes Again!

In a statement today, Brian Frons, the president of Disney-ABC's Daytime Television Group, said, "We had hoped that Rosie would be with us until the end of her contract three weeks from now, but Rosie has informed us that she would like an early leave. Therefore, we part ways, thank her for her tremendous contribution to 'The View' and wish her well."

Yet Another Claim Debunked

A lot of the 9-11 Deniers like to point out that the first chapter of Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton's book Without Precedent was entitled "Set Up to Fail". Of course, this is just another example of the Truthers inability to read (perhaps that is why they like videos so much?). I borrowed the book from the local library the other day and will be giving my thoughts over the next few days.

Why was the commission set up to fail? The book (page 15) explains:

"Both of us were aware of grumbling around Washington that the 9/11 Commission was doomed--if not designed--to fail: the commission would splinter down partisan lines; lose its credibility by leaking classified information; be denied the necessary access to do its job; or alienate the 9/11 families who had fought on behalf of its creation."

But the paragraph continues:

"What we could not have anticipated were the remarkable people and circumstances that would coalesce within and around the 9/11 Commission over the coming twenty months to enable our success."

The bulk of the chapter concerns the initial start-up of the 9-11 Commission. One minor fact that I was not aware of before: That infamous book that Philip Zelikow wrote with Condoleezza Rice? It was about German Reunification.

Update: The 9-11 Denier commenters miss the point (as usual). I am not arguing that this proves the 9-11 Commission succeeded. I am proving that anybody stupid enough to make the argument that Kean and Hamilton have admitted that they failed because of the title of that chapter, plainly does not know how to read.